


In Realities Undecided

by AlphaAquilae



Category: Hyper Light Drifter
Genre: Angst, Blood and Injury, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Chronic Illness, Gen, Gothic, Mute Drifter, Non-binary character, POV Second Person, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Telepathy, first time uploading my writing pls be gentle, look it's gonna be a lot of gothics I'm covering everything just to b sure, mostly - Freeform, parental guardian, she/her Alt Drifter, she/her Jackal, they/them Drifter, they/them Guardian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-18
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-11-23 17:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18154805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlphaAquilae/pseuds/AlphaAquilae
Summary: They ask you what you last ate. You’d answer, had the metallic taste of blood not long overwritten any such memory.---A collection of gothics I'll keep on expanding as I go. I have over 4k of these babies in store so b readyWatch out! Some gothics contain spoilers!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Before continuing, some explanations!  
> Drifter - they/them, speaks through holographs and sign language, they need a break. their clone/shade (Co-op Drifter) is referred to as Co'op.  
> Alternate Drifter - she/her, referred to as Alt, really snappy, daughter of the Jackal (one way or another). not a fan of her clone, which will be referred to as Co'alt  
> Guardian - they/them, biggest parent on earth, can't help but adopt the drifters under their care. has really bad blood with their shade, aptly named Shade Guardian  
> Shades can communicate among each other (and their respective origins) telepathically, but cannot speak. A shade and their origin share the same mind.  
> Blueskins (like the Drifter and the Drunk) are discriminated against.  
> Shades always communicate in cursive!

The security door shuts behind you with a low hiss. You’re not afraid of the skeleton leaned against the wall like a sack of grain.  
Their cloak is soft and warm to the touch. The bones are not.

  
The gentle plucking of a guitar reverberates between the streets of the city, serenading things you cannot perceive.  
You only ever spot the musician once. Where have you seen their face before?

  
Rumor says the titans aren’t dead—that they’re merely sleeping.  
But you’ve seen them up close, peered into their empty eyes; you know better.  
God, you hope you know better.

  
Every cloak you find fits you perfectly, every corpse gives it up far too willingly. No matter how you look at it, your leg is broken.  
You sink your last remaining medpack into your chest without a second thought.  
The pain ebbs. You don’t know what you’ve unleashed into your veins.  
Don’t question it.  
The pain ebbs.

  
The woods have so many eyes you’ve stopped keeping count. You know there’s a module tucked away in the underbrush, you can hear it, downright feel it.  
But the pulsating sound can’t drown out your common sense, nor the scratching of claws on dirt.

  
“Have you seen them,” you ask in hushed whispers. “The newcomer.”  
The Apothecary nearly drops their vial of precious substance. “Don’t-- curse my shop with talk of _it_.”  
You chuckle at the old fool, but keep your voice low nonetheless. “Are you afraid of them?”  
“Yes, and so should you,” he warns you. “It has no eyes.”  
  
  
A sudden urge to vomit sent you staggering to the closest wall. You feel your innards squirm, and the black bile that spewed from you reflected the darkness of the night.  
The familiar magenta eye stared you down, and you do not hesitate to wipe the tar off your lips and pretend like you weren’t dying.  
In your mind, you clarified, “I didn’t allow this.”  
_I didn’t ask._  
  
  
You should be dead, all things considered. Yet you refuse to die. The raccoon soldier’s sword had clearly nicked a bone, severed an artery, and you see your pale reflection in the blood pooling around you.  
You refuse. Pressing your palm against the deep cut, for a moment, you wonder if it’s really you who refuses.  
  
  
The hard-light door vanishes, granting you passage. Your cautious steps echo off the old prison walls like whispers in the dark.  
Skeletons resembling your own litter the numerous cells, and you catch yourself envying their fate.  
  
  
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, they say. You clutch your broken arm closer to your body, taking your cape off with the other.  
It covers your Alt's unconscious form quite perfectly. You remain next to her, gently rocking back and forth, pleading for the searing pain in your body to stop.  
No one ever told you what to do when your friend and enemy are the same person.  
  
  
The world around you is a suffocating blur of black and pink. The sickness has taken everything from you, everything but your weapons.  
You stare at the pistol clutched in your clammy hand, raising it to the side of your head without another thought to waste.  
You wake with a start. The burning firewood cracks reminiscent of gunshots.  
You knew falling asleep would be a mistake.  
  
  
You let your eyes wander as you pass through Central, catching sight of its denizens going about their day.  
The town bard plucks away at their guitar.  
A toad and an otter exchange wary glances and quiet words.  
The butcher’s knife cleaves down on the cadaver of a beast you cannot recognize.  
You lock eyes with the wielder, and an ancient part of your brain tells you to run and not look back.  
  
  
The sinking feeling in your gut grows stronger the longer you run. Where? Where’s the path you came from?  
The trees, they all look the same… surrounding you.  
Outnumbering you.  
They’re the least of your concerns though as the skittering behind you draws closer and your vision quickly grows darker.  
The blood red leaves of the canopy above rustle in satisfaction  
  



	2. Chapter 2

Once, Guardian watches you cobble your cloaks. Your fingers lead the needle gingerly to mend the wounds of battle, precise and quick as if handling skin. They express admiration of your skill.  
You nod in acknowledgement, feeling every fixed stitched wound on your skin burn with anger. This wasn’t something you had wanted to learn.

  
\--Spoilers--  
Slowly you raise your hand, your shaking fingers hovering over the pink metal you’ve been begging to forget. It’s them.  
You feel relief wash over you, ripping away with it the pain, determination, fear and perseverance you’ve carried with you like a held-in breath.   
You are free, you’ve done your part. There is nothing left but you, and the memories you keep.  
You look up to your old friend—they have no eyes.  
\-----------  
  
  
Your blade barely makes it through its target before you drop to your knees, coughing and heaving and cursing every god you remember.  
Desperately, your tired lungs try to hollow themselves out, the old promise of immortality dripping from your lips, transmogrified into a smothering curse.   
Your vision flickers as you inspect the fluid on your hand, wondering whether it’s the last time you’ll behold it.  
  
  
When the night is darkest, it communes with you.  
The edge of your sword beckons with sweetest promises of true rest. Closure, even.  
Your eyes glaze over as you look at it, unsure when you let it snake its way into your hands. The blade hovers over your guts so close your breath begins to waver.   
It lies, you think. But do you know?  
  
  
\--Spoilers--  
The Guardian is there when you double over, letting loose splatters of pink before you even have the chance to remove your mask.  
Your back arches to the rhythm of your choking.  
You can’t stop.  
Your friend’s grip grows tighter around your shoulders as if to keep you with them.  
You’re not the only one being killed by your disease.  
\-----------  
  
  
 The stars keep you company tonight. Their radiance twinkles against an obsidian backdrop, cold, old, endlessly uncaring of your struggle.  
You stop to stare. You’ve never noticed how many eyes the sky has, yet never feeling its gaze pointed at you.  
You’re suddenly acutely aware of the cold seeping beneath your skin, and you wonder, have you forgotten the universe, or has it simply forgotten you?  
  
  
You weren’t hearing those murmurs before, you know it, you’re _not_ imagining them.  
You notice them in the dead of night, in the heat of battle, you trip over them until you’re on the ground and turning your guts inside out.  
They follow you into your dreams, and one day, step out as a waking nightmare.  
A second you, different, but equivalent, stands before you, and it is _angry_.


	3. Chapter 3

\--Spoilers--  
Judgment’s screech pierces your body, ricochets inside your skull, digs into your brain like claws and teeth.  
The blood in your veins, the sickness within, it roils and thrashes to heed the call of its origin.  
You fight to tame your own body, and with one decisive motion, pull out your sword to point it at the mass of black and pink.  
You didn’t make it this far to fall without a fight.   
\-----------  
  
Death loomed so close you share your breath with it. One of its inky tendrils slithers around your neck, and your fingers almost shoot up in a panic until you remind yourself that it’s ok. It’s ok, it’ll be an easy passing if you stop clinging to what’s lost anyway. Your hands curl into fists, in prayer, that this may finally, finally be your last breath. You almost believe it, until you shoot up from your resting place, clammy hands replacing the phantom grip upon your throat. You're not surprised. It would've been too merciful an end.  
  
  
Alt lays in their bed, shallow, pained breaths pushing needles into Guardian's guts. She said she merely wasn’t feeling well, that a fever had befallen her.  
The lie is thin as her voice, flecks of pink on discarded rags that weren’t discarded enough. The hollow of their hand descends to rest gently over her eyes, silencing her.  
“Sleep,” they whisper quietly. “The worst is yet to come.”  
  
  
Life surrounds you, mocks you. Not just the grass, the earth, or the bones below. The darkness between the trees screams out to you: trespasser. trespasser.  
It cuts deep, past skin or blood or marrow, striking something inside you that had been in denial all along.  
You are a corpse unburied, a prey pursued.   
You see and hear and feel the forest and its crimson leaves, and you know they’ll stand here long after you’ve accept your fate.   
  
  
Once you’ve spoken to another drifter about being sick. They acquainted you with a term you weren’t familiar with before.  
"You know when you feel like you’re always being watched? Like your existence isn’t your own?"  
No, you thought. At least not in a way that forced you to care.  
No, you mumbled. You weren’t enough to be noticed by Central’s citizens.  
No, you said. Of course the gleaming eyes of the crystal wolves don’t bother you.  
No, you screamed, feeling like your own vision was robbing you of privacy.  
"Paranoia, some call it. And they say you never escape it."  
  
  
\--Spoilers--  
The gnarled roots of the forest guide you with the certainty of a hundred minds, and your own finds no room to question them.  
The wind gently tugs at the hem of your cape, beckoning to hurry. You see it then, a distance from you, the chilling sheen of white bones in sunlight.  
A blazing sword rests along the corpse’s ribcage, and when you reach out, and pull vehemently…  
The forest falls silent.  
This place called to you, but… were you meant to answer?  
\-----------  
  
  
Some nights it’s bad. Some nights it’s worse. You twist and turn your body in every way, any way you hope to be able to exist in.  
You care for yourself, you eat, you reject it all into the river. You drown in the river.  
The night mocks you with cosmic silence and an impending sense of utter isolation, and you understand, as you reject yourself further, that there is no way for you to exist anymore. You’re an intruder to your own world.  
  
  
You’re intimately familiar with solitude. But Co’op somehow made that feeling worse.  
At a campfire, whilst checking your gear, you drop your shadow a single thought, a question often reverberating in their presence: What have I done to you?  
You don’t have to look at them to see the seething rage behind their reply. _My existence never belonged to me. I wonder whose fault that is._  
  



End file.
